We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good. I cannot wash my hands, eh? We all have to give something!

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else’s, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

I got my own back.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn’t want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

There’s room for role models who make mistakes.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.